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Spotted in Sharps Chapel

This ain’t no bear, check out the tail. Photo taken by a game camera. Wildlife officials in TN say there are no black panthers in our area. When you call to report a sighting they snigger, someone I know responded to such contempt by stating ‘well it won’t matter if I shoot it then’ and the official stated flatly, ‘don’t kill my cats.’ HMMM

Point of reference, this is Union County in TN

Update:

I want to welcome everyone interested in what may be a panther lurking in the woods around East Tennessee. Please feel free to leave a comment, I am interested in your interest. Leighc2014

We live in unoin county but on the south end and it was a few months ago something was eating our animals up and it tore down a side of a barn at my neighbors .. twra came out and said it was nothing just keep our animals inside and watch out for small children. now really they say it could be a bear we have even heard bob cats. but we never saw it everytime our dogs would go crazy and we flip the lights on to go see we never could see anything. we had dead dogs to dead calves and no one would help us or tell us anything. all they said is don’t shoot it if we spot it call them. well that wil never happen. someone needs to tell us something. speaking for HickoryStar

They said if you see it don’t shoot it? Are they crazy? Don’t answer that, obviously they are. You must protect yourself and your livestock. Set up a game camera, who knows, you might get a better photo than this one

Well i live near the 40/75 split and have seen one and called they TWRA acted like I was crazybut ny neighbors have seen it as well as a bus driver. While I am at it have seen and heard a bobcat they say they don’t exist either but do. Some guy on Craigslist hit one and had taxidermy and was selling he hit it in the Kingston area. So guess TWRA knows this but not admitting for some reason.

I also know for a fact that they have been in the Claiborne County area. There was one around my grandma’s house when I was a little girl. You would hear it call at night, sounded like a woman screaming. She heard her chickens going crazy one night and went out with a firecracker, tossed it into the weeds below the house and a huge black panther flew up the hill behind her house into the woods! She went into the weeds the next day and found the remains of her missing chickens.

We used to possum hunt in the union county woods. We were followed off the mountain one night by a panther. It had been attracted to the fire we had going. It was mainly curious, but it took us a while to go back into those woods.

Panthers were called ‘Painters’ by mountain folk years ago and they all saw and heard them. the Smokeys are huge and many areas relatively unexplored so painters could well still exist and be spreading. I guess the TWRA don’t want widespread hunting to wipe them out.

If that is a house cat someone has been feeding it steroids. A black mountain lion is just a regular one with an excess of melanin. Just like albino animals have a lack of it. I have seen an albino deer, opossum,& squirrel. Also have seen a piball deer mostly white with a little bit of brown on it. I couldn’t believe it at first either .

I have seen one in Union country…on hwy in 1986 or 87 it crossed hwy 33 in front of my mg at flowers by dot. Was as long as my car. Of course in the US panthers are actually dark colored cougars. Several years ago a cougar was spotted in Wisconsin and the game folks collected hair samples…a few months later the same cougar was killed in Massachusetts…proven by a dna comparison. So our spottings could be just passing thru.

It’s is a tricky photo but this animal is just a bobcat folks the way the sun is and poor camera quality makes it look black but if you look closer at the face it has markings. I am a hunter and have seen big bobcats like this one I have seen a panther about two years ago in tazewell tn and was nothing like that the head on the panther was substantialy bigger